Coinshots in Elendel

[nervousnerd he/him]

So, remind me if I missed it but do coinshots in Elendel mainly use lamp posts and the such for moving around? That doesn't seem like the best idea for a city that uses them as messengers and scouts (Train tracks do not seem to cross the city but go around it).  Are there so few that they don't worry about that? Why is it that there are no major spikeways like Vin and Kelsier used to move back and forth to Fellise? Wouldn't it be faster to have a couple of those?

[Oversleep]

IIRC, the Elendel Daily excerpt had somebody complaining about lamposts on his property constantly damaged by Coinshots Steelpushing around.

As for the spikeways, there just aren't that many Coinshots for it to be sensible.

[amulligan99]

Im sure as elendel improves its roads to be more modern they will also put metal in the roads just for that very purpose.

This also brings up a good way to add value to property, installing anchors for local coinshots to use instead of the nails your house is made of.

[natc]

Well, in a city with roads everywhere I'd imagine it'd probably make more sense to put budget towards stronger lampposts than to make space for spikeways. You could also just bounce off of buildings if you're careful.

Spikeways do actually take some practice to get going on, mind you. Vin was a quick learner doing it in barren wasteland instead of a crowded city with carriages and cars.

[nervousnerd he/him]

IIRC, the Elendel Daily excerpt had somebody complaining about lamposts on his property constantly damaged by Coinshots Steelpushing around.

As for the spikeways, there just aren't that many Coinshots for it to be sensible.

Yeah. I was rereading and that is what made me think about this.

Wax says "Coinshots like himself were relatively rare" but what is rare in a population of 5 million (in the city)?   Perhaps the police and cab companies using coinshots as scouts is a more recent thing but there are at least a few hundred or maybe even one thousand going around all of the time (any hard statistics around to confirm population figures?). Metalborn seem to be valued in the post-Catacendre world for actual jobs that use their skills instead of just soldiers and assassins.

Also, Vin said she made the trip from Fellise to Luthadel twice as fast as a man on horse. That might not be as fast as a car is capable of going but cars mean traffic. To me, coinshots could be as useful as the telephone.

This to me says that putting cheap scrap metal under the main thoroughfares at least would be valuable for speed and limiting property damage. At the best it could be a primitive form of email.

 

[Oversleep]

Yeah. I was rereading and that is what made me think about this.

Wax says "Coinshots like himself were relatively rare" but what is rare in a population of 5 million (in the city)?   Perhaps the police and cab companies using coinshots as scouts is a more recent thing but there are at least a few hundred or maybe even one thousand going around all of the time (any hard statistics around to confirm population figures?). Metalborn seem to be valued in the post-Catacendre world for actual jobs that use their skills instead of just soldiers and assassins.

Also, Vin said she made the trip from Fellise to Luthadel twice as fast as a man on horse. That might not be as fast as a car is capable of going but cars mean traffic. To me, coinshots could be as useful as the telephone.

This to me says that putting cheap scrap metal under the main thoroughfares at least would be valuable for speed and limiting property damage. At the best it could be a primitive form of email.

 

We need a WoB on the percentage of Metalborn, percentage of Allomancers, percentage of Ferrings...

There was something about 16% of population being Metalborn (I'm not sure about this). We do not know how many of them are Twinborns, but let's say that there are 10% of Allomancers and 10% of Feruchemists which gives us 4% of Twinborns.

That gives us about 0,625% (1/16 of 10%) of the population everywhere. This means that one person in 160 is a Coinshot.

I don't know the age distribution on Scadrial nor do I know when people start actively using their abilities or when they stop... Let's say that old enough and not too old yet make up 75% of the Coinshots. That means that one person in 214 is a Coinshot and is able to use Steelpushing.

Now, I don't think everyone wants (or is pressured not to) to take up the job based on Allomantic abilities. For example, Coinshot scholar wouldn't leave his research just to become a messeneger. Let's say 85% of these would use a spikeway.

That would leave us with percentage of Coinshots using spikeway in the Elendel, but only if the City and Roughs had the same percentage of Metalborn. I think we can safely assume that there is a higher percentage of Coinshots in the Roughs than in the city. Let's split them 45%-55%. This means that 1/10 of these Coinshots leave the City to live in the Roughs (I think even more, but I'm trying not to overestimate). So that leaves us with the percentage of population in the city actively using spikeway: 10%(percentage of Allomancers)*1/16*75%(age restriction)*85%(pursuing Coinshot abilities)*90%(dropping those born in the city and relocated to Roughs)=0,35859375%. So about one person in 279. That gives us about 17930 people spread probably evenly throughout the 5 million city.

Now I don't know anything about urban developing, so I will leave it at this: Would building multiple spikeways for about 0,36% of the people be sensible? Given that they can bounce on virtually anything?

 

Edited February 26, 2016 by Oversleep

[Lord Aldric]

You wouldn't actually need the government to make them, nor to justify them,  As in all capitalist societies, companies would build the spikeways based on personal need, though I am sure some will try to get some government funding for it.  I could imagine a law office putting spikeways between its main building and the courthouse for special messengers delivering documents, or businesses having spikeways between various brokerage firms and the stock market exchange.  In time, most of the business districts would be pretty well spiked.

[Lopen he/him]

BoM spoilers

Spikeways and such will probably become implemented eventually because of new technology which may allow anyone to use allomantic powers.

Edited February 29, 2016 by Voidus

[amulligan99]

Lopen if you could please put that comment in a spoilers tag, not everybody has read BoM.

[Pathfinder]

Eventually when they begin implementing sewer systems and subways, those tunnels will have metal all over them and at least with the sewers, just below the asphalt. So wouldn't need spike ways. There would be metal everywhere. 

[DocHoliday he/him]

Eventually when they begin implementing sewer systems and subways, those tunnels will have metal all over them and at least with the sewers, just below the asphalt. So wouldn't need spike ways. There would be metal everywhere.

These aren't necessarily good anchors, due to the surrounding concrete and asphalt. In a matter of reality, if you're Pushing along down the street, it seems reasonable you're likely to simply push off the best anchor.

Which invariably brings us back to the fact that metal above the streets is going to be put under some stress, by some 15,000 daily coinshots.

Guys, that's like 15,000 daily car wrecks to an insurance company.

The simplest method to curb community services costs is to provide stable, heavy sources of metal I think.

The most desirable would be the full blown modern traffic light, but that's a bit ahead of Elendel, so perhaps reinforce the street lamps?

[natc]

Might need to be made taller as well as reinforce them, actually. For lurchers trying to do the same. Gotta be a safe distance between each too. Must be a desirable mode of travel to keep most of them from just bounding off buildings as shortcuts all day.

[Lopen he/him]

Lopen if you could please put that comment in a spoilers tag, not everybody has read BoM.

So sorry! I just learned how to do so and I don't use this forum everyday and I didn't follow this topic so I didn't get a notification. Thanks to Voidus for editing it for me!

[hoidhunter he/him]

I've made mention of this in other threads...so sorry if I sound unoriginal...but I really want to see a coinshot who rides an allomantically powered unicycle that they can hold onto while steelpushing to jump traffic etc...

[Pathfinder]

These aren't necessarily good anchors, due to the surrounding concrete and asphalt. In a matter of reality, if you're Pushing along down the street, it seems reasonable you're likely to simply push off the best anchor.

Which invariably brings us back to the fact that metal above the streets is going to be put under some stress, by some 15,000 daily coinshots.

Guys, that's like 15,000 daily car wrecks to an insurance company.

The simplest method to curb community services costs is to provide stable, heavy sources of metal I think.

The most desirable would be the full blown modern traffic light, but that's a bit ahead of Elendel, so perhaps reinforce the street lamps?

Well from a monetary stand point I see the reverse. It is either spend a large amount of money on your city's budget for making reinforced light posts or, make it illegal to push on them, requiring all coinshots to use the sewer system to push on and fine any coinshots that disobey the law. That way you already have an infrastructure to use without additional expenses, as well as a slight "tax" income from those that disobey and cause damage. 

[Your3rdShadow he/him]

Well, if we take a look at the Alloy of Law supplement rule book for the Mistborn adventure game, which Brandon has said that the adventure game and supplements are canon until he contradicts them(he didn't want to give away details that could ruin future books). We see that 1-50 people in the elendel basin are metalborn(either misting or ferring). So assuming there's 5,000,000 people in Elendel, that means about 100,000 are metalborn. Than we divide that by the number of powers available - 32. Now assuming they crop up equally, that means that there's about 3,125 coinshots in the city alone. The supplement book also states that spikeways are regularly made as a cheaper alternative to trains when it comes to remote towns or towns in difficult to reach locations. I'm new to this forum by the way, so I'm not really sure how often people refer to the adventure game rulebooks, but as Brandon has stated their canon until their not at a Q&A, I just kind of roll with that.

[Oversleep]

 We see that 1-50 people in the elendel basin are metalborn(either misting or ferring). So assuming there's 5,000,000 people in Elendel, that means about 100,000 are metalborn. Than we divide that by the number of powers available - 32. Now assuming they crop up equally, that means that there's about 3,125 coinshots in the city alone.

We have to also account for Twinborn, so it would be less. You could divide by 32 only if there were no Twinborns. By dividing the Metalborn by 32 you're counting Twinborn twice.

Edited March 19, 2016 by Oversleep

[Your3rdShadow he/him]

No I'm not, 1 in 2500 people are twinborn according to the supplement, but for the sake of argument, I'll remove them from the count, 5,000.000 divided by 2,500 is 2000. So 100,000 - 2000 is 98,000 divided by 32 is 3,062.5.

[Oversleep]

If you divide the number of metalborn by 32 (assuming even spread of metalborn powers) you get the number of metalborn of given power.

So N/32 of Lurchers, N/32 of Coinshots and so on...
And N/32 of Skimmers, N/32 of Steelrunners and so on...

But some of those are the same people. You're counting Wax both for being a Coinshot and Skimmer.

[Your3rdShadow he/him]

Look, I'm not a math expert, if it looked like I was trying to come off as one, I apologize, I was just trying to get a general estimate to help clarify the matter. I'll just drop it.

[Charlie.x.3000]

The number of twinborn is small enough it doesn't matter... I'm pretty sure you only have 1 significant digit, so that small number of twinborn doesn't matter. We aren't doing abstract math here, 5 million is estimated to the nearest million, or perhaps not even that.